INDIAN CONSPIRACY.
AFEW weeks ago, while describing the "latest Indian inci- dent," the expedition against the Black Mountain,—an expedition scarcely noticed here, but which in the eyes of Anglo- Indians stamps General Wilde as an efficient soldier,—we alluded to the secret alliance between the Mohammedan clans of the Suleiman and the Mussulman Puritans of Eastern Bengal. Many of our readers, we dare say, smiled as we described that alliance as one of the dangers which" made the faces of Indian states- men stern," setting the phrase down as a mere rhetorical flourish, and will smile still when they hear that the Indian Government has permitted part of the evidence on which that statement rested to be published to the world, setting the whole affair down as one of those extraordinary "Indian stories" which nobody believes. Years of freedom have made the idea of a " plot " very un- familiar to the British mind, and it is very difficult to induce a sharp London man, f all of information about people and of ignorance about things, to believe in the reality of any conspiracy till it explodes. In his heart he thinks Napoleon's Ministers silly to make so much of conspiracies, and holds that the Queen of Spain was expelled by an "explosion of outraged public opinion," which somehow, he does not know how, and does not particularly care, became suddenly endowed with the command of bayonets. The story related in the Friend of India, on official authority, of a conspiracy stretching over half a continent and embracing many thousands of men, of a secret association levying regular taxes and storing them up for war, of entire provinces honey- combed with secret societies, of an underground railway, as the abolitionists used to call it, a thousand miles long, that is, a chain of stations, hospices, guides, and purveyors main- tained to keep up communications among the disaffected, makes no more impression upon his mind than a story from the Arabian Nights. Nothing of the kind exists in Western Europe, and the genuine London man means by "mankind" the people of that little corner of the world, by "civilization," their habits, and by " opinion " their incessantly changing ideas. He is sometimes mistaken, nevertheless, and perhaps we may do him a service by pointing out some of the social conditions which make conspiracies in India so frequent, so formidable, and so permanent.
The central social idea of India, among all its tribes, races, and creeds save the Pagan aborigines, is the helplessness of the indi- vidual against nature, society, and the ruler. All these forces the native believes, with a belief which has the force of an instinct, are hostile, are permanent, and are irresistible by any individual strength. Alone any man must be defeated, and he ought, as a being possessed of reason, when so left alone to yield, without sense- less resistance or childish repining at his unlucky fate. Accord- ingly, whenever isolated, he does yield, be the tyranny never so patent ; but as, like other men, he dislikes yielding to the,disagree- able, he casts about to secure the strength which he sees only in the strictest combination. Sometimes by laws,—as in the case of the family, which in India is, as it were, welded by external pressure into a unit,—sometimes by custom, as in the case of the castes ; and sometimes by religious pecu- larities, as in the case of the great Hindoo heresies, he con- trives to bind fractions of society together into considerable social Trades' Unions, within which he feels himself protected and comparatively safe. He can trust his family, he can trust his caste, he can trust his co-believers, and he gradually builds up between himself and the dreaded outer world a wall of circum- vallation, within which only is he himself ;—at his ease, unsuspici- ous, and, for a native, almost cheerful. So passionate is this desire for combination, that the first task of every Hindoo here- siarch is to found a secret society, with caste rules, pass-words, and secret customs of its own, customs which are made, in nine cases out of ten, as offensive to the rest of mankind as it is possible to make them. That very offensiveness serves as a wall against the outer world. Every little body of outcasts which happens to break off from society forms itself into a community, every little sect becomes a separate nation, separate as Jews among Europeans, intermarrying, eating, and where possible dwelling only among its members ; every trade becomes a Trade Union,—for example, the printers, who are an anomaly in Hindoo- ism, have formed a very strict one, and the palanquin-bearers are more united than English shipwrights, —and even criminals display the same disposition. More than forty criminal societies are known to be spread over India, with laws, customs, and means of communi- cation of their own, bound together by bonds which, except in rare instances, are never known to break. The Government, aided by a man of genius, succeeded in breaking up one such, the well- known fraternity of Thugs ; but it has not yet succeeded in putting down another,,the society which lives by poisoning ; and has been
baffled for years by a third, which maintains itself under the decorous title of "the Basketmakers " exclusively by crime. The very bankers and bill dealers form castes, and their secret language is the despair alike of the English bankers and the Government Post Office. Every such society, no matter whether the bond be caste, or creed, or race, or crime, keeps if it can its own lodging- places, its own temples, its own post, hides itself and its proceed- ings from the remainder of the world in a secrecy which, all natives alike desiring the same protection, it is not etiquette to invade. There are associations whose bond is a disbelief in this or that rule of morals,—one such, for instance, admits, in defiance not only of Hindoo morals, but of Hindoo instincts, a community of women,—but the remainder of society, though as genuinely shocked as New England is by Mormonism, would regard it as a wrong to interfere, to search the obnoxious temples, or put down the obnoxious worship. The one cardinal law of these bodies, no matter of what kind, is fraternity against the outside world. They may hate each other, or despise each other, or kill each other, but on a society question raised by the rest of mankind they are united to the death. Indian society, in fact, to use an illustration familiar to our readers, is a congeries of sects, clans, families, or creeds, who live among each other pre- cisely as the Jews of the middle ages lived among Europeans, or as the priesthoods to this day live in Southern Europe. The facilities a system like this offers for vast conspiracies among a silent,Teticent, vindictive people may readily be conceived. Where- ever any one of them goes he is sure of friends who on a society question will never desert him, or betray him, or refuse him any information or aid whatever, be the laws of the foreign or domestic ruler never so oppressive. If the society have an object, it will wait years, or centuries, for that matter, till it be attained. Why should it not? The object is its bond,—the commandment to seek that object will no more be forgotten than Austrian nobles will forget their rules about intermarrying. There is no feverish, varying, many-coloured European life to dis- turb prejudices or ideas once accepted ; the children are taught them as things sacrosanct, and customs, hatreds, objects are handed down through ages unbroken and unweakened. There are men living in a village which bears to Calcutta the relation which Greenwich bears to London, cultivated men, men immersed in trade, who have never entered Calcutta, who till doomsday never will enter it, because it is polluted by Nuncomar's blood. That tragedy, a century old, is as fresh to them as yesterday, and will be as fresh a thousand years hence. A thousand years hence, ,if one of those families passed a descendant of Hastings, he would spit, turn his back, and in default of courage to cut him down would solemnly doom the murderer's child to perdition.
Of all these societies, the largest, the most powerful, the most widely diffused is the Mahommedan population. Everywhere it has villages, towns, temples, serais, places within which no infidel foot ever is or can be set. Its missionaries wander everywhere, from Hydrabad to the Suleiman, and eastward to Assam, keeping up the flame of Islam, the hope that the day will arrive, is coming, is at hand, when the white curs shall pass away, and the splendid throne which Timour won for the Faithful shall be once more theirs. They have their own papers, their own messengers, their own post, and they trust no other. Repeatedly, before the telegraph was established, their agents " outstripped " the fastest messengers Government could employ, till the vexed and puzzled officials in- -vented theories about carrier-pigeons, dromedaries, a "voice tele- graph," and we know not what. The simple explanation of the phenomenon was that the Government express was carried by Mussulmans, who carried the private news also, and allowed the private messengers to get on a few hours ahead. The news of -oar defeat at Chillianwallah was carried by Government servants, on Government ponies, fed in Government stables, straight to a native palace in Calcutta, twelve hours before it reached the Viceroy's desk. Every. temple is as sacred from search as a harem. Every dervish, moollah, or missionary is a secret agent. Every Mussulman Court is a treasury to be drawn on if Islam is in need. All this organization, which has always existed, has of late years been drawn closer, partly by the Mutiny, which taught the priests their hold over the soldiery, partly by the expiration of the "century of expiation" by which Mussulman doctors explain the Infidel rule, partly by the marvellous revival of the Puritan element in Mohammedanism itself. The old hereditary purpose to expel the Infidel when possible has become a definite plan of Insurrection at the first favourable chance, which chance, it is settled, is to be the descent of the green flag from beyond the Suleiman. This may happen any day, should a momentary defeat of our power in the hills tempt the Affghan Emir to proclaim a holy war, as the recently defeated pretender, Azim Klian,—a person whom half India urged Sir John Lawrence to ackuowledge,—had solemnly promised to do. With such a promise before them, we do not wonder that the Mussubnans of Bengal are subscribing, or even that they are paying in Behar a sixpenny income-tax to the temples, under a pledge of receiving their lands rent-free -when the day of triumph arrives. Intermediately, they have little or nothing to fear. The Government of India wisely abstains from any attempt to regulate the social life of two hundred millions of men ; white officials in Bengal usually number about two per million; the natives will not peach, except under temptation or
pressure, for insurrection is in a way the national cause, and in a district like Dacca, where Mohammed gains thousands of converts every year, a Holy War might be preached every Sunday in every mosque, and a "Sacred Rent" be accumulated for years, without any official ever hearing of such occurrences. Even when warned, Government can do very little, it cannot arrest Mussulman missionaries while Christians are preaching at will ; it cannot stop subscriptions for Islam while subscriptions for the Gospel are published in every paper ; it cannot arrest the Moollah for denouncing the Infidel while the Padre is denouncing the idolater. Its policy has hitherto been to wait till rebellion descends into the streets, and from that policy it has never, so far as we know, departed seriously but once,—in the great Treason Trials of 1863. Every now and then it lays hands on a leader, under its one despotic right, that of keeping a dangerous man in confinement without trial as "a State prisoner," and every now and then it collates great quantities of evidence furnished by spies, by traitors, by converts, or by stupid persons who do not see the drift of their own confessions ; but the body of the conspirators could not be reached except by a crusade against Mohamedanism as a creed,—an impossible wickedness, which would involve a religious war proclaimed by Christians on behalf of Pagans against a monotheistic faith. The conspiracy must go on, and the Government of India must, as it has just done, warn its foes that while it respects their temples, and refrains from interfering with their sermons, and does not consider subscriptions as acts of treason, it is, never- theless, thoroughly aware of all that is intended. It is not very pleasant for people with relatives and friends in India to know that some ten or twelve millions of British subjects are plotting, and preaching, and subscribing in support of a massacre of all white men ; that the country is traversed daily by hundreds of fakeers, each of whom is an emissary of rebellion ; that thousands of swordsmen are only waiting the signal for a rush on the Europeans ; but those are the conditions on which life is lived in India, and there is, in such a society, no remedy except publicity. We cannot arrest millions, nor ought we to remain in India if the condition of safety is a permanent crusade against one-fifth of the subject population. All we can do is to warn the intriguers that their names are known ; that "their centres, the railway station of Pakour, in Nagpore, and Surujghur, in Patna," are under surveillance ; that their taxation is strictly watched, and that the first effect of their conspiracy has been to treble the force employed against their allies on the Suleiman. This warning bas been very cleverly given, and though the conspiracy will pro- bably go on, much of the heart will be taken out of the leaders, to whom this defiant publicity will suggest the Viceroy's conscious- ness of irresistible strength.
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